


What it feels like to be a ghost

by Trash



Category: Linkin Park
Genre: Angst, Ghosts, Hauntings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 23:39:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1165974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash/pseuds/Trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brad buys an apartment and, after finding out that he has a roommate, starts wondering if it's possible to fall in love with a ghost</p>
            </blockquote>





	What it feels like to be a ghost

This is quick but not quite painless,  
It sits perched on your arm.  
Tacky and irrelevant (So what?)  
A permanent reminder that I'm crushed

When Brad goes to view the apartment the realtor lets him in with a smile, closing the door behind them. “This one’s been on the market for a while,” she says, “people seem to be into violent ghosts and nothing else which is...well, it’s not my place to judge.”

Brad has no idea what she’s talking about. He found the apartment on a middle-man property website and, because of how low the price was, arranged a viewing immediately.

“Things should be relatively quiet for a while,” the realtor continues as she follows Brad into the eat-in kitchen.

“Good,” Brad says, “because I always worry apartment blocks will get pretty noisy.”

“Not at all,” the realtor reassures him, “this place is so calm, that’s why folks aren’t interested.”

A quiet apartment block seems to Brad like a selling point, but he guesses he isn’t the one selling houses for a living so he doesn’t question her. And besides – she’s right. After he moves in things are great for days. None of the neighbours have dogs that bark into the night, there’s no screaming kids, no loud parties.

The apartment is nice. It has polished, real wood floors, a modern bathroom suite, granite kitchen worktops and cherry-wood units and a ghost that likes to watch the Godfather movies and listens to Depeche Mode.

Brad doesn’t think about it too much the first time he comes home from work and the stereo in the living room is on, playing Enjoy the Silence quietly. After all, the stereo has a timer he used to use as an alarm clock. But two days later when he comes home and the TV is on Channel Seven and their non-stop Godfather trilogy day he doesn’t know what to think.

It isn’t until he gets up to get a glass of water that night and there’s a man standing at the bottom of his bed in a black suit that he really freaks out. Without taking his eyes off the man he reaches over and flicks on the bedside lamp, but the man doesn’t disappear, he just blinks slowly.

“Who are you?” Brad asks. “And what the fuck are you doing in my house?”

“Where is she?” The man asks, tearfully. “Isn’t she coming?”

“I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about, buddy, but I’m one second away from calling the cops.”

“She’s not coming.” The man says, resolutely, before turning around and walking down the hall, heading for the bathroom.

Brad unplugs the lamp and brings it with him. Having never faced a robber, especially not one that seems to be smacked off his head, he has no idea with the situation but he supposes being armed is better than anything else. The bathroom door is closed when he gets to it and a little bit inside of him is screaming for him to call the cops. But if this weirdo had wanted to kill him he’d have done it already.

Cautiously, he opens the door and reaches in to turn on the light. The room is empty, but when he steps around the door the bathtub is full of pink-tinted water and the man in the suit lies under the water, his eyes closed and his wrists bleeding.

Brad drops the lamp, the bulb smashing into a million shards for him to cut his feet on later, and he screams.

***

It’s the realtor, not the police, who manages to help Brad out.

“Oh him. Yeah. I mean, I thought you knew. Why’d you think it was so cheap?”

“So...he’s dead?”

“Yeah.”

This is a conversation at nine in the morning, over bagels and coffee in Starbucks ten minutes away from where the man in the suit is sitting on Brad’s couch listening to Depeche Mode. The realtor takes a gulp of her coffee and rolls her eyes, “You ought to read the fine print.”

“To make sure I don’t buy anymore fucking ghosts? I’ll make sure to do that.”

“Look, you didn’t get a poltergeist, so there’s no refund available for you. Besides, he’s a real sweetheart.”

“He killed himself in my tub last night.”

She nods, “Yeah he does that sometimes.”

Brad blinks, waits for an explanation that doesn’t come until he clears his throat impatiently.

“His wife. She didn’t show at the wedding. So he went back to their apartment, put on her favourite CD and slashed his wrists. His best friend found him later, bled to death in the tub.”

“That’s horrible.” Brad splutters, almost choking on his coffee.

“Yep. But I mean, at least he isn’t a murderer or a rapist, those guys make the worst ever dead-room-mates.”

He doesn’t know what makes him wonder, but before he can help himself he’s asking, “What’s his name?”

“The ghost?”

“Yeah.”

“Chester,” the realtor says, pulling a photograph out of her portfolio of a twenty year old with messy, blonde hair and a girl by his side, their eyes shining. “His name is Chester Bennington.”

***

When he gets back Chester isn’t there, but Brad feels far from relieved. He should have asked the realtor more questions. Like; how much does an exorcism cost? And; how long will he be here for if I don’t exorcise him?

He forgets, after a while, that he was waiting for something to happen, and crawls into bed after drinking a bottle of whisky feeling strangely empty.

***

The next morning Chester is sitting on the bottom of Brad’s bed, watching him. Brad sits up and squints. A road drill hammers at his head and he takes deep, steady breaths to stop himself from throwing up.

“Morning, Chester,” Brad says, trying to sound confident.

“She didn’t come.”

“You mean your wife?”

Chester looks him right in the eye and nods, suspiciously. “How do you know?”

“I heard. I heard you’ve been here for a while, too.”

“Ten years,” Chester says. “Who are you?”

“I’m Brad. I’m...your room mate.”

This, for whatever reason, makes Chester smirk a little. “Shouldn’t it be the other way round?”

“You were here first.” Brad says, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

“Yeah.”

There’s an awkward silence for a while. Chester stares at the floor, picking his nails. Brad takes the chance to observe the ghost. He doesn’t look much older than Brad, his hair is blonde but not naturally, his suit is clean but cheap. Peaking out from the cuffs of his sleeves are brightly coloured tattoos, and as Brad leans in a little to try and see them better Chester looks up.

“Didn’t your mom ever teach you not to stare?”

Brad blushes deeply and looks away. He fidgets with the bed sheets for a second before looking back up to find Chester watching his hands.

“It’s the one thing I regret,” Chester says, not looking Brad in the eye. “I ruined my tattoos for her.”

“What was her name?”

“Her name is Samantha.” Chester tells him, his voice devoid of all emotion. “She didn’t show up.”

Brad doesn’t say anything. He can’t imagine. He’s never been in a relationship serious enough to end in a third date, let alone marriage. He certainly can’t imagine being so hurt by someone who claimed to love him that he’d kill himself. And if he did it’d be them he haunted, not this crappy apartment.

“So,” Brad says, cracking his knuckles, “do ghosts eat? Because I’d die for some pancakes.” Chester snorts and Brad blushes. “I mean...not literally die. Figure of speech, you know?”

“Yeah,” Chester smiles, “I know. I don’t eat, but I’ll keep you company if that’s what you’re angling at.”

“Only sad-cases eat out on their own.” Brad explains, getting out of bed and heading toward the bathroom.

“You must go out a lot, then.” Chester quips. Brad spins round to insult him, but he’s already gone.

***

Brad has ordered his food and is sitting waiting for it to arrive before Chester shows up. He strolls down the street in a v-neck tank top, shades and skinny jeans with dirty old Doc Marten boots laced loosely over the top. He takes a seat opposite Brad at the table on the sidewalk and stares at him, blankly.

“I don’t even know what to say to you, right now.”

“Well I couldn’t come to the fucking Pancake House in a suit, could I?”

“Watch your language, asshole, this is a family establishment.”

“Make me, douche bag.”

He’d normally have something witty, or at least so random that nobody could possibly have a come-back for it, but he can’t stop staring. “I...where did you get the clothes from?”

Chester takes off his shades and watches a waitress wander past, a tray piled with plates held high above her head as she shimmies in between tables and disappears inside. “Why?” He asks, turning back to Brad as the door closes behind the waitress.

“Just...it’s not like they’re mine.”

“Your tatty Adidas tracksuits and vintage tees don’t work for me.”

“Well, yeah. So I was just wondering where you got them.”

“When I was alive I worked at a Burger King,” Chester says, leaning back in his seat. “I made five bucks an hour and worked three days a week. As if I could afford a wedding on that kind of money. So every weekend I’d line a bag with tin foil and go shoplifting, then sell the clothes I stole. Those little tags with the ink in are real fuckers, and I did have to hide a few ink stains with brooches and shit. But if you stick them in a freezer then pry them off later, it’s all good.”

Chester fiddles with his shades. “What I’m saying is, shoplifting is much easier when nobody can see you.”

It suddenly dawns on Brad that he might be the only one who can see Chester and that somebody might be calling the psyche ward right at this very second. “So...you’re invisible.”

“Not right now.”

“Oh.” Well that makes sense. It also makes Brad feel more comfortable and less like he’s about to be carted off to a mental institution. The waitress brings his pancakes and he eats them in silence, aware of Chester watching is every move. “Why can’t you eat?”

“I can eat, I just don’t need to. So I don’t.”

Brad stares at him blankly, a forkful of pancake halfway to his mouth.

“If you knew you had no need to exercise ever again, would you do it?”

“No.”

“Exactly. Plus, do you have any idea how many calories are in those things?”

“No. Don’t spoil this for me.”

Chester laughs. “Okay, sorry.”

“So what’s it like,” Brad starts, sipping his coffee, “being a ghost?”

Chester shrugs, “It’s okay. It got pretty lonely for a while before you bought the apartment. I lived with a family for a little while, but their kids kept freaking out so they left.”

“That’s really sad.”

Chester shrugs again, as if it isn’t anything he really cares much about. “These things happen. I was a bit worried when you freaked out on me the first night. I thought you were one of those people. You know, the ones who watch horror movies from in between their fingers?”

“Well you have to admit – you in my room in your wedding suit asking where your wife is, that’s pretty scary shit.”

“I hadn’t been around for a while,” Chester says. “I had no idea what was going on. Sorry about that, anyway.”

“It’s all good,” Brad says, going back to his pancakes. He has so many questions, but they’ll have to wait until he knows where to start.

***

He stays awake all night thinking about death. Which has to be one of the most horrible surprises thrown at a person ever. Brad hasn’t lived a very planned life – he went to school, then went to college to study law but lasted two semesters before dropping out and not going back. Now he works in PR and that’s okay, for now. Who knows what will happen next? Brad certainly doesn’t mind not knowing – not having plans mean’s he’ll never be disappointed, and always be surprised.

But death can’t just creep up on him. He hates the idea of his parents coming to his apartment where he has left all of his things unfinished because he hadn’t expected to go so soon. He wonders how Chester’s friend felt, packing up all his things. Simple things, like an untidy bedroom, a packet of unfinished cookies, stacks of dishes in the sink. Things that prove that he had not expected this.

But maybe, just maybe, Chester had the right idea – maybe taking control of your own death is a good idea. Of course, Brad would plan things a little better. He wouldn’t leave any dishes for his mom to clean, and he’d only leave full tins and packets and bags of food so she could take them home with her or give them to his brother without anything going to waste.

He’d box up all his DVDs and CDs correctly, instead of shoving them in random cases, not one of them where they belong. He’d make his bed. He’d leave a note.

But what do you write on something you won’t get another chance at? ‘Goodbye’ seems too simple, and rather final seeing as there’s a chance he may end up haunting this apartment forever. And ‘I love you’ doesn’t show his gratitude for his parents and the life they helped him make.

Suddenly, for no reason at all, he starts to cry. And he can’t stop. He imagines himself at his wedding and the one he loves isn’t there. She, the one person in his life he had never thought would hurt him, has let him down like never before. And things won’t ever be the same, so he’s better off being dead.

“What’s wrong?”

It’s Chester, and he’s sitting on the bed looking down at Brad’s face wet with hot, angry tears. He reaches out and gently brushes away a tear about to drip from the end of Brad’s nose and smiles.

“I don’t know,” Brad says, “but I was thinking about one thing, and then my train of thought lost control and I wound up here, at pansy-pants-cry-bag station.”

Chester laughs and lies down beside him. “I don’t want to make this into something about me, but if you hadn’t found out about me being here would you still be crying?”

“No.” Brad is a little shocked by his own honesty. “No, I wouldn’t. But that’s not a bad thing. I’ve just been thinking about death and love and loneliness and I guess I just have my period or something, I don’t even know.”

Chester smiles and shifts closer. “But you’ll be okay?”

“Yeah. I’ll be fine.” Brad smiles back, not intimidated by what he’d usually consider to be a breach of his personal space. Maybe it’s because Chester is a ghost, so it’s not even a real breach of his personal space. Maybe it’s because he’s feeling a bit down, and needs the comfort of another body. “You’re really warm,” he says, “for a ghost.”

“Isn’t that a line out of Casper?”

“Probably. Does that make you Casper?”

“That makes you Christina Ricci.”

“You know, Casper was pretty cute when he was alive.”

“So was I! I still am, for that matter.” Chester sniffs, indignantly.

“I didn’t say you weren’t.”

Chester grins. “You think I’m cute?”

“Now you’re just putting words in my mouth.” Brad says, rolling his eyes. “It’s a good job you are cute.” It suddenly dawns on him that he’s flirting. With a ghost. But it’s hard to remember that Chester is dead, when he’s all the time stomping around the apartment in Cuban heels and listening to Depeche Mode and drinking vodka with Brad even though it has no effect.

Now what?

Chester just smiles a very enigmatic smile and says, “Go to sleep. You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

“If you’re wrong I’ll have to kill you.”

“I beat you to it,” Chester says, closing his eyes and sighing softly.

And with Chester’s not-real-but-still-warm-and-gentle breath literally ghosting over his skin, Brad falls asleep.

fin


End file.
